If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking on the
link on this line. You will have to register
before you can post but you can *read* the forums even before you register. Sometimes registration is disabled when we're fighting off a hacker attack. However in this situation you can still register by using the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page and sending us a message introducing yourself and requesting your account to be created from our end. To start viewing messages,
click on Forum above then select the forum you want to visit from the selection that will open below. To read our exclusive articles and interviews, click on Home (we have interviews with some major opera stars). The Home page also has widgets with Recent Posts, Recent Articles, Recent Activity, Polls (scroll down). In-Depth content can be found by visiting the Learn section of our clickable index. Our site is monitored by Sucuri and certified to be malware free. Scroll down to see our security certificates and our partners' logos. Welcome to Opera Lively!

An interesting fact surrounding this opera is that it came a long way after a very slow start: it premiered as a student production (at the Malïy Theater in Moscow, on March 29, 1879, with student singers from the Moscow Conservatory), and only got a professional performance at the Bolshoi one year and ten months later, on January 23, 1881.

Reception wasn't that great, especially as compared to the wild success of Maid of Orleans. Many critics complained that Tchaikovsky shouldn't have messed with one of Russia's most beloved works of literature.

Outside Russia the initial reception was lukewarm as well, and it was slow to conquer other European cities, being seen as a Russian curiosity.
...

So that our readers can follow the opera while they read the musical analysis scene by scene, here is the first complete recording of Eugene Onegin, made in 1936. It was allegedly the soundtrack for a film that was never made.

It's difficult to appreciate in the 21st century how much of a novelty was Onegin, when it premiered in Moscow, back in 1879. Most of Russian and Slavic opera was devoted to political topics (A Life for the Tsar, Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina,...), fairy tales (Ruslan and Ludmila, Rusalka, May Night,..) or even Biblical adaptations like Serov's Judith. However, Onegin was centered in the life and passions of standard human beings.

Onegin is a Romantic opera. It's also full of melody, there are no formal experiments here, it was the perfect daughter of her times. Of course, with such a crafted instrumental music composer for the orchestra as Tchaikovsky was, we can find many fine details in the orchestration, as well as some motif building, but the prominent role is never in the pit, it's in the voices of the singers. Not that there is any spectacular vocal pyrotechnics, that was very far from Tchaikovsky's intention, nor do they fight a huge orchestra. He just wanted from his singers expressiveness, and flawless delivery of the text.
...

Let's start with some notes on two historical Lenskys, the two best tenors of Imperial Russia.

Of course, one of them is the great singer Leonid Sobinov. He was active from 1899 to 1914, and then after the Great War he was busy with being the Bolshoi's director, and little by little he just retired as a singer. On stage, he was a great mixture of the Italianate school of singing, and the Stanislavski's acting system.

Listen to his flexible voice, a very fluent singing, always restrained and elegant.

In 1934, he died but passed the torch to none other than Sergei Lemeshev.

The one singer we haven't interviewed from the upcoming Opera Carolina performance of Eugene Onegin is Ms. Victoria Livengood, and it is a pity, since she is a native of North Carolina, also know as "The Dixie Diva." She has had a very illustrious career and performed opposite great tenors, in great opera houses around the world. Now she is back and is living in North Carolina again. She sings Filipevna in this production.
...

Eugene Onegin, lyric opera in three acts (1879), music by Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky; libretto by the composer, Konstantin Shilovsky, and Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the novel of the same title (1833) by Alexander Pushkin

Produced by Opera Carolina at the Belk Theather, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, in Charlotte, NC, USA; opening night on March 17, 2012
The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Meena
The Opera Carolina Chorus
...